Think Happy!

One of my hobbies is what geeks-trying-to-sound-cool refer to as Mind Sports. My main interest is in Memory, but I also try to keep up to standard with Speed Reading - which is a skill that comes in useful all the time. With that in mind, I thought that it might be helpful if I shared some tips.

What is Speed Reading?

Firstly, this is not referring to skim reading. I’m not suggesting that the way to read faster is actually to skip 2 thirds of the reading material! Skimming a text can be useful, but also has it’s drawbacks. (For instance, you are skimming for what you think you know is there, but what if what you really need to find is currently unknown to you?) I’m actually talking about reading the entire text, but doing so 3 or 4 times more quickly.

A better term for what I’m talking about - or, at leat, for part of it - is possibly Range reading. Before I got into this I was reading somewhere between 220-280 words a minute. Now, depending on noise, tiredness, the text, etc. I naturally read anywhere between 900-1100 wpm.

So, you’re not really reading it properly then?

An old lecturer of mine said that he disapproved of speed reading because you can’t really take in what you’re reading and you can’t enjoy it. In my experience, he couldn’t have been more wrong! Repeated research has found that - in most cases - an increase in reading speed has been matched by an increase in comprehension. And where speed has gone down, comprehension has also decreased! It seems that reading more quickly (but still reading properly) actually increases the likelihood of understanding and retaining what we are reading.

There is a simple explanation for this: when we read slowly, our brains get bored! We are probably capable of comfortably reading 3-4000 words a minute and yet - due to bad habits - we force our poor brains to plod along at about 200 wpm! The brain thus flits back and forth and doesn’t actually really read what the eye is lazilly plodding through. Have you ever noticed that the slower you read, the more often you have to go back and read a word, sentance, paragraph or page again? This is because you’re brain is hardly functioning as you read. Worse, by the time your eyes have processed a block of meaning (usually a paragraph or sentance), the beginning of it has left your short-term memory before your brain has a chance to register it!

How do you do it?

I thought you’d never ask! There are a number of simple steps to take that will dramatically increase your reading time. I’ll just give the most significant one for now: read more words! Simple, ain’t it?! Imagine what a difference it would make if you read 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 words in the time and manner that you now read 1. Trust me, this is what your brain is crying out for! Just look straight forward and - without moving your eyes - note how much you can see around you. I’m guessing that you can comfortably see a couple of foot to either side. That is, without trying, your eyes can see and you brain can organise and process much of the data within a 5 foot area. So, why is it that we limit ourselves to reading one word at a time when we can clearly take in a wider width of text? (There are all sorts of reasons why, but we don’t need to get into those right now.)

Why not try to read by taking in blocks of words instead of single words on their own? This may feel strange at first and may take a little bit of practice, but you actually do it more often than you think. (Remember the last time you drove past a Bill board? It’s fairly easy to read “JUST DO IT!” in one glance.) So, with a few minutes practice you should be reading at least 2 words at once; and think about that - you just doubled your reading speed! With a little practice you’ll be reading 4-6 words and taking in a whole line of text in the same time that you were previously reading two words!